Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Data Visualization: Tell a Story with Data!

I went to the Comets' (community of educational technology) ‘Engage’ Event at the Discovery Center today – and heard a talk given by Katy Culver who is in the UW-Journalism Department and looks at trends in data visualization.


‘It all started with USA today’ – what she meant was the weather map – using information graphics to represent temperatures across that nation.

From print to digital: we are now telling stories digitally, but like all innovations – there are people that are doing it brilliantly and those that fail to represent information effectively.


Here are some examples of excellent and an awful data visualization representation:

Obama vs Bush effects on deficit in one graph


Visualizing worlds food consumption


The Keys to Victory for Obama

Fractions of a second: an Olympics Musical


Can you guess which one is the 'ugly duck'?

'No such thing as info overload only a bad design' Tufte


For those interested in tools to help in communicating with data:
Google Fusion Tables
Tableau Public
Both include quick and intuitive mapping capabilities


5 comments:

  1. Wow! In the Visualizing worlds food consumption map, the calories consumed vs. income spent on food graph is striking!

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  2. I had a hard time quickly comprehending the graph with the states Obama needs to win.

    I have heard so many great things about Katy Culver. Thanks for going, and thanks for sharing.

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  3. Shirley wins! - yes that was the 'ugly duck'!

    Has anyone used text2mindmaping?
    http://www.text2mindmap.com/

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  4. Haha I agree...the keys to victory chart is incomprehensible at first glance; the exact opposite of what a chart should be!

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